in the hall of mirrors

Old Songs

[Los Angeles, 1991]

Late again, and the woman at the desk is pleasant about it, but I will lose time from my appointment.  The tanning salon is an increasingly important convenience for me, it clears up, however temporarily, the waves of red lesions across my arms and torso.  And I look rather dashing with a tan, if I say so myself.  She hurries me into place at the large, swiveling face machine with a friendly pat.

The strangest thing about tanning salons is the enforced nothingness, the formal, unmoving period of placing the face, the body, under glass and metal copies of the sun.  Sometimes I fall a great distance into a dream-stupor so alien to the salon environment that I come out of it bemused, speaking in an alien tongue; or I drift from place to envisioned place, looking for something to, I don’t know what.  The blaze of the face machine snapping on, and I shut my eyes immediately, carefully.

And, of course, boredom.  Uncomfortable, the force of heat against my face.  I turn my head back and forth to get away.  But if I endure this light, my skin will clear up somewhat, perhaps, and even though I haven’t been working out, I’ll look fairly good.  And maybe that will be enough to hold on to my proto-lover, or boyfriend may be the accurate term, or at least: the man with whom I have a quasi-relationship.  Demi-relationship.  No, I prefer to hope: proto-relationship, the beginnings of earthly glory, stepping onto a golden path that will be wonderful and enlivening, soaked with love and intimacy and such.  Or at least affection.  Though short, as it will last only until one of us runs out of T-cells.

Music playing endlessly in the background, a station of the current pop inanities, sometimes varied with older songs whose sharp edges have been worn by years of familiarity.  Music noticeable now, because one of those old songs is putting on an appearance, and the parts of my brain that hold the patterns of sounds, of songs, are already flowing into familiar channels before my conscious mind can identify the words:

it’s a cool night

The heard words trigger an armature of memory that supplies the rest of the lyrics, the chords, the entire feeling of the song.

just want to hold you
by the firelight

I had a strong reaction to this song when I first knew it, what, ten years ago?  A pleasant tune, and what was it about those chords?

if it don’t feel right
you can go

Yes, the astonishment of the backup voices, the way they suddenly appear in soft chords to color and emphasize those unexpected words, added notes like soft, shimmering lights,

it’s a
cool
night

and the words keep repeating, there’s not much material really, but the pattern is so subtle and rich that I react to it every time

just want to hold you

and that must be why it was so successful, the sensual surprise of the chords and

by the
fire
light

the gently falling harmonies, but they always land in that strange,

if it don’t
feel
right

wistful line, how odd, to open the door in that gentle way, setting some fantasy lover free, free because of a sort of

you can go

I responded to this so strongly ten years ago when I was young, it meant something, it spoke of the softness, the eroticism of, but not an insistent, no, instead more of

cool night

as though everything would work out, I could see the fireplace and the vague forms of fantasy lovers as though in a vision, and me, and I could see

want to hold

and everything would somehow be so much less lonely, the unendingly cold winds would stop blowing and I would have arms around me,

fire light

I thought it would all work out so gloriously, and so soon, by 1981 at the very latest, about the same time when the first AIDS cases appeared,

if it don’t

and that someone would love me so much that it wouldn’t matter how I looked, or if I were clumsy or uncertain, that we would be happy and so safe

you can go

and life wouldn’t be so strung out, like our last trip through the desert, when he drove while I gazed out on the flat, hopeless horizon, the waterless dusts, knowing that it was possible to go great distances in any direction but that things would never change however far you went,

hold you

and that life is too much like that desert now, far from the rich, green forests where I grew up, that I expected

it don’t feel right

and I want that back, that vision, I want to have had, at one time, that kind of love, that kind of life, the things I hoped for and believed in when I was twenty-odd,

if it don’t

not this shaky existence, the drugs and the knife-edge futures, sick faces, and all the polished appearances over dried hearts, and

by the fire light

I’m crying, how awkward, I can only hope that before the light box turns off and rises away from my face that this damned song, those chords, will end, and how can I wipe my face before everyone sees that

you can go

[Los Angeles, 11/20/91-4/19/92]

Two places at once

The past few days of depression: it might be worth acknowledging something that might not be evident from this blog – that I have been here before, and for long periods of time. In fact  the blog is not only about recording/reflecting that anomie, that hopelessness, which has become so normative over the years; but also about possibly helping to get past it, about writing through it.

Lying on the couch, here in northern England – which reflects similar days over the past four years since moving here – also has a more distant mirror (shades of Barbara Tuchman): a scratchier couch in a warmer climate, from the late 1980s through 1992 in Los Angeles. There is a strange way that my mood, my memories and ideas, are merged with the ones from that time – as though it is difficult (especially when I am half asleep) to tell whether it is 1992 or 2006.

That time did produce some of my darkest stories – I was involved in Terry's HIV+ writing workshop, I was fairly permanently stalled on my PhD, and I certainly wasn't expecting to live for much longer (I was diagnosed with HIV in 1987, and this was well before the 1996 medications changed the shape of the future).

1992 itself was a strange time, sunny but  with a deep internal darkness: I knew I had to leave Los Angeles, was moving to San Francisco – what I don't know was, why did I move? That summer was so bleak, I was so fearful and tired – the move was so difficult; I can't even imagine why it had to be done: what possible good could it have been for me to move back to the Bay Area, expensive and complicated as it was to manage? Perhaps I felt trapped between pressures of keeping the apartment, maintaining a car and part-time job, in Los Angeles, when I thought I could be better taken care of in San Francisco – if I were to fall ill and die, not having a car and being able to connect more closely with the gay community would make life in the Bay Area easier. And probably I thought I would be able to connect with a person, to make a relationship during my last days – I can't figure it out, and don't remember enough... but certainly none of my thinking from that time involve anything about career or long-term plans.

It is strange: such complete despair that year, such utter surrender to the end of my expectations. It may seem odd to mix my attitudes now with those – now I am frustrated at my disaffection around writing, and getting promoted, and living somewhere where I'm happier – how could those be the same?

Perhaps that is what is so confusing: suspended between being despair and anxiety, between work and dying – and I still haven't made the difference clear to myself: probably because, no matter what seems true on the surface, I'm always caught between those anyway....

The Shape of What It Means

[Los Angeles, 1991]

I am in the waiting room, going through my outline and list of readings for the degree exam in musical aesthetics. First is Cooke: naïve, but he made a good shot at figuring out the basic problems. If only he weren’t such a dilettante – he works his arguments right up to their most remarkable implications, then backs off into an absurd mysticism, claiming: we can’t ever really know why music works. Well, I don’t buy it. The nurse calls me in to write down my symptoms. How many days has it been like this? Has there been any blood? Your chart says you’re allergic to sulfa?

Are you in pain now? Yes.

Back out to the rows of plastic chairs to wait again. Ingarden, defining the work of music: fine, that’s clear. No problems. Of course, he doesn’t get anywhere near the problem of meaning. Meyer and information theory, okay. Limited point of view, it avoids the ecstasy, the eroticism of music. Hard to care much about what he thinks. Don’t any of them care, don’t they remember why they wanted to play music in the first place? A pleasant older nurse comes out with my file and says: Walk along the orange line and turn left.

Temperature and blood pressure, the usual routine. I should be nicer to the nurse, be willing to chat, but I’m tired and distant after three days of sudden sickness, watching my body draining so rapidly, it’s frightening. He tells me to sit and wait again. Nattiez, that’s someone I would argue with, he thinks what music means is merely its grammar, its syntax: how we understand the relation between the notes, between the phrases. But it must be more than that, otherwise music would be a matter of chess games, equations, which, I admit, have their attractions, but – it must be so much more. The primary care doctor calls me in.

Answering the same questions all over again. But at the end I ask a few questions of my own: what is cryptosporidia? From the Greek, and with that malicious prefix, as though the disease is a secret code that can’t be broken. Well, she says, it shows up sometimes in people in your condition. And she answers once more, well, there is one experimental drug, but for the most part, no, there is no successful treatment. She goes out to consult with the doctor from the AIDS clinic, leaving me to take my clothes off and lay them on the chair, and sit with a hospital robe in my lap. And again I think of the question of what it means, how we got to music in the first place, what does it mirror? Why do we make these sounds? She comes back in, and examines me with a slightly alarming thoroughness. She speaks carefully, telling me about the tests: yes, we really should check these things. You’ll probably be fine. Don’t think about it too much, there’s no use worrying before we know.

I think music has some absolutely lucid, powerful relation to the way we think, the order in which we go through things, how feelings and ideas develop in our heads. I think it mirrors what we really are, the content erased and replaced with notes. Not a metaphor or image as in writing, where it resembles something we think about what we are, what we feel: but the structure of how we feel, the pattern of the thing itself. She tells me I can get dressed and take the samples down to the lab.

I seem to be perilously close to some sort of Baroque theory of affects, as though the patterns of music resemble certain standard movements in our blood and organs, four temperaments, eight, maybe more; as though the falling notes recall our sobs, the long sweet ones our cries of sorrow or ecstasy. Or the Japanese: they weep because the koto recalls for them the flight of cranes into the sunset, they envision a loss and a fading, and they become sad, resigned. But no, that’s a cultural construction, I’m not talking about that. It’s more than that, it must be more. The man taking my blood is a little rough; he apologizes, and I press the cotton into my arm. I leave the lab and find my way through the labyrinth of white halls to the parking lot.

In the car, I sit for a moment. I am numb and tired, angry at them for charging me money I don’t have for tests that frighten me, not wanting to think of what is happening, of the story my body is unfolding, and of its probable end. I put on a tape of gentle music, melancholy and distant: guitar and piano. How do composers imagine it, how do they write such stuff? It sounds like wisdom, but a wisdom we cannot touch, living on the other side of a permeable but unbreakable membrane. But the truth is, I am blessed in this: I know more about music than most people. And about the meaning of music, the structure, the unending attempt to find out why it goes this way, and why we also go that way when it does: I must understand more about it than all but, perhaps, some few thousands of the people in the world, maybe less. I thought I had something special to say, I wanted to write papers, or a book that would magically illuminate us all, tell about the lights that guide us through our lives. But that takes time, time and energy, and both are failing me more quickly each day. And why, when I hear this gentle, stepped falling of the guitar notes between those of the piano, does it bring me away from the numbness, back into myself?

It is the exact shape of grief. Not a metaphor or a picture, not the description of the things that put me into this place, but the place itself, the shape of its movement through time and my body. I can hear the form of my own sorrow as I drive home through the endless traffic, crying quietly and listening to the music. And I still can’t answer the question: how does it do that?

Maybe if I knew, I would live forever.

[Los Angeles, 6/25/91-4/19/92]

Dim / reflections

Positions... different ways of viewing life – my life, my life as it is now, my life in my imagination, or if you prefer, life generally....

(a) Resistance to writing is a neurotic symptom, related to being a rigid and immature judgmental personality, constellated with various feelings/strategies of fear/laziness/self-justification, etc. My anxious reactions to the impending restart of the school year are more neurotic symptoms, from someone who is both rather self-indulgent and also somewhat oversensitive to the emotional eruptions and conflicts that all humans engage in as entirely normal social practice.

Or: (b) Health concerns (minor symptoms relating to a major condition which are not in themselves, however, major) and side effects of medications (notably Ritonavir and Efavirenz) together form a general and long-term physiologically depressive state that makes it difficult to be energetic, to approach problems proactively, to engage smoothly with others, etc. This is exacerbated by personal isolation (lack of supportive personal relationships at home), a weak social life out of the home, and poor adjustment to an alien climate with less sunshine, warmth, etc.

[Addendum: (b1) generalized toxicity related to medications mentioned in (b) exacerbated by current liver problems; liver reacting to subject taking numerous commercial food supplements that are overburdening it and causing rises in liver enzymes, etc., creating a general context of a body out of balance.]

Or: (c) Writing in this context is just a way of being coerced into various cultural/institutional structures – commercialization/consumerism applied to academic writing, and to writing generally. The book is a product – and worst of all, the academic book is an unreadable product (a consumer object that is not consumable, something designed purely to maintain a financial/institutional structure of production, purchase, measurement, etc.). My worries around productivity are actually elaborated versions of a need to conform, and my battles with it are a bid for freedom, or at least a bid to show that I know what my bonds look like.

That would mean that my doubts are rooted in a wider awareness of the very real falsity [sic?] of my position – a realization that my world is indeed both trammeled and dependent on political/cultural structures that are only internally viable, and in fact are simply one rather minor kind of nonsense that is common in my time. Consider in this context Proust's fussing about what people think of him, or even more appositely Musil's tangled ideas about a Viennese culture that is rotting to pieces around him – one cannot help feeling from time to time when reading Musil, 'oh get over it', since all the things he is anguishing over will have vanished a few short years later in any case. Maybe in fifty years, climate change will be such that anyone reading about such worries as these would be similarly thinking, 'oh get over it', and wonder why I didn't give everything up and go live in the Orkneys.

(This is the kind of interpretation that could also encourage giving away all one's goods and becoming some kind of monk, or joining a commune, or moving to a South Sea Island, or even joining the Foreign Legion. Unfortunately, my postmodern, passive position dictates that it is more probable that I will simply buy a DVD of a film about the Foreign Legion – I'm thinking of Beau Travail, of course – and watch it to look at all the muscular soldiers and their engagements with life and death, instead of actually going anywhere, instead of actually doing anything.)

All this, and much more equally useless analysis and reflection, has occurred in a context of two days of dimness, of a shadowy sense of reality, of the past and the future held in a suspended world of temporal fractures and multiple possibilities... a sort of quantum-universe awareness of one's life....

***

As we are once again in the hall of mirrors, what are some of the reflections of these moods and ideas, lying around on my Parsons table? A book of Karl Kraus' aphorisms (distilled bitterness, like Unicum, that peculiarly named, unpleasant-tasting digestive liqueur Joe was so proud of having bought back from Hungary); South Park flickering by on television, with Kenny's parents telling him the story of Job, so he can get over his troubles (hemorrhoids, as it happens); and Stephen Micus playing through iTunes – a fine musician whose graceful, dignified mixtures of traditions perfectly fit my mood.

How can, in fact, these extended chants in Persian, in the strong 'belt' region of his baritone, have such power, as they repeatedly and fierily hit the note above the tonic and wail around it, holding yet longing, falling and returning, mourning yet resigned –

One flings one's hands open to the desert winds, and tries to give everything up to them: take it, take it all....

A quote

A possible response to my feelings of this morning:

If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up.

[From Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching; I'm a Mitchell fan – his Rilke translations are the best, ever.]

Not that I ever feel that I can live up to such levels of self-awareness, but... at least it suggests that I may be on some productive path, rather than merely a dead end....

Failed

Last night I saw A Scanner Darkly, which was quite wonderful. On my way out, I bumped into Jonathan, the handsome and successful young doctor who has helped me on some of the HIV presentations, who was headed into another movie; I was in enough of a daze that it was actually rather difficult to fake casual conversation.

The book has always been one of my favorite Philip Dick novels (with Ubik, the first I ever read; Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, which is a sort of parallel to Scanner; and, above all of course, the mysterious The Man in the High Castle, which has a climax that I always find far more disorienting than any of the basic concepts that run the novel). I couldn't help identifying fairly deeply with the film – the anomie, the sense of decline, the sense of confused waste and the constant return to the repetitive, meaningless, draining actions that create that waste.

I also spent an appreciable part of the afternoon arguing with a postgraduate applicant who seemed to be dooming himself to failure through doing everything backwards, and complaining about the results; and I had the mild shock two days ago of having my opinions dismissed by a colleague, a fairly frequent experience during the school year (I become unused to it in summer, but will have to deal with it again on the usual regular basis, starting in a couple of weeks); and of course the previous weekend in London, and the week in Spain, spent with colleagues and advisors who have great affection for me, but not much in the way of expectations, and two of whom have made some promises they will clearly not bother to fulfill – not out of any malice, just out of a combination of forgetfulness, plus the implied sense that effort spent on my career is effort that is kind of wasted. Good money after bad, I suppose.

They all acknowledge my potential – but of course I've been playing the potential card since my early teens. Potential instead of action: a disastrous exchange. As I think backwards through time – the past few weeks, even months, and most certainly the years, the evidence simply continues to collect....

All this, with various other minor and fragmentary experiences, plus my normal obsessive concerns about writing and failure, came into focus as an acutely lucid morning dream and waking vision of my current position: that, although it is true that I am not a dramatic failure, it is no wonder I am powerless at work, not invited to preside at pretty much anything, simply not considered by a great many of my colleagues, locally and internationally. It is all simply a natural and accurate response to the figure I cut in the world, to use a rather eighteenth-century phrase – people do not think of me because I myself have not made enough happen; I am indeed perhaps in the middle of the scale of normal academic failures, not someone anyone would need to fire, but someone who will simply be in the back of various pictures, someone who is not really suitable for promotion, or attention, or being asked to speak in a professional context.

And this is not experienced with my usual inflated, narcissistic tragedy or self-pity: just an edge of horror at how clearly the picture develops, if I look at it straight on – that, whatever excuses I can drum up around health and history, I have firmly cast myself as an also-ran.

And even this blog, of course, is simply an ineffective attempt to bypass the work that would have a significant effect on my position, in favor of the casual, ephemeral – the failed....

Hamam

Home again.

After a hot bath: slow, sensual North African music; lying on the couch, reading ridiculous but fun German gay comics (my beloved Ralf König, who has published some new books since last I looked through amazon.de); a musk incense; late at night; I am unbelievably comfortable... especially after about twelve days of admitted wonders and successes, but also much dislocation. (And sleeping has been annoying all these days – allergies to the stuff they used on the sheets in Spain, and the frankly dirty dorm room in London, had me restless and itching every night... the evaporation of all that has such an impact on my ability to relax.)

Well, this is in line with that tendency to indulge myself that has appeared since I moved to northern England – and of course I would have to admit, rather Freudianly, it's not just a reaction to a cooler climate, it's also a response to a relatively empty sex life. Ah, see, Freud: you don't need sex, just have a nice bath with oils....

Really, it's something to snicker about, but smugly. All fairly ridiculous. But also great fun... here in the seclusion of the hamam (oops, I almost said: seraglio)....

Intro-

Well, that is decided. The dramatic shape of the weekend in London will fizzle out, basically; a whimper rather than a bang....

Friday night: the astounding experience, which I will not relate, but which involved the wonderful Carl, with whom I have spent time before. Not only a very sexy man but also a very good man (when he was walking me to my bus on the morning after we first met, when he had to go to work at the AIDS organization where he's in charge, some brats in his fairly rough neighborhood had set fire to a public trash bin; he went into a shop to arrange for someone to call the police, to take care of it, all without fanfare). If I actually lived here I would be aiming for him to be a permanent part of my life... if only we had more to talk about (unfortunately our conversation, on both sides, is a bit unsuccessful – we just don't have that much in common).

Then last night I'm tired, busy, he calls, wanting to see me but tied up himself. We promise ourselves Sunday.

Today, Sunday, I take the train down into the countryside to visit the grand David (it should be David le Grand, if there were still titles like that). I tell David the whole story, including the parts I absolutely shall not share with you (no, don't beg), and we interrupt our discussion of papers, anthologies, and colleagues for an exchange about being solitary, getting older, living alone. Summary: he's fine with it, I'm not.

This evening I'm coming back into London, Carl has invited me to come over and bring a bottle of wine, he works in the morning, I know I'll get a 9 am call to work on the anthology... and I allow inertia to run me, yet again: I cancel, and stay in this rather dismal dorm room instead. But I do make a point of telling Carl how amazing Friday night was, how amazing he is, and that he should visit me (as though a Londoner would voluntarily come to the provinces). He sounds relaxed and as though he's just as happy to be at home....

So: no regrets. No huge regrets, anyway. And yes, you needn't tell me, I know: it's this kind of response that has me living alone. Well, then, tell me: does it seem to you that, on personality tests, I'm an extrovert, or an...?

Not amused

So, having come home after one slightly disorienting/disappointing trip, I have to leave again for a weekend in London... don't much want to travel, don't want to pack, don't want to create time for two possible side trips or consultations... ah well.

I'm going so that I can see a production of Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George – a meditation on art and artists, and life, and imagination, and loss and disappointment... perhaps it will be worth it after all.

***

Later: having arrived, slept for about 3-4 hours, showered... feeling a bit more human. Although the list of Things To Do and Things I Should Do is a bit long, I think I'll try to enjoy the weekend....

***

And the next day, Saturday: enjoyed the Sondheim hugely; will write about it. And had an amazing  part-romantic, part-other experience Friday night; won't write about it, not on a bet. Clearly I'm still  a bit unaligned with writing since coming back from Spain – can it be the impending pressures of school starting again, the feeling of duty associated with writing, or just the greyer skies? – sorry about that; in any case will attempt to become coherent again, and communicative again, in the next two days.

Maybe it's just that, at some level, I still feel a bit too much like she, at the head of this post, looks....